LTG: Archive May 2009

LimitsToGrowth Archive

May 2009

Weighing Ethnicity When Picking A Spouse [5/31/09]
NPR has a series of mostly sob stories, Immigrants' Children: A Foot In Two Worlds.
In an earlier America, the actual immigrants were understood to perhaps have remaining ties to the old country, but the kids were expected to become assimilated Americans through their school experience. One example, noted elsewhere by NPR was jazz musician Benny Goodman, whose 100 birthday is now being celebrated. Besides his clarinet mastery, Goodman's band was the first to bring in black musicians, including Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton and Charlie Christian, plus he used many arrangements by Fletcher Henderson. In short, Goodman immersed himself in American culture.
Now, at least according to the liberal Gospel of NPR, maintaining tribalism is highly valued and assimilation to American values is not.

Overall, interracial marriages are becoming more common in America, according to recent U.S. Census data. But those numbers mainly reflect the increase in black-white marriages. The same data show that since the 1990s, fewer American-born children in Asian and Latino families are marrying outside their ethnic group.
Take Jessica Nghiem, a UC-Berkeley student from Sacramento, Calif. While her parents are from Vietnam, Nghiem describes herself as thoroughly "Americanized." In high school, she says, she dated "white and Latino guys." But her current boyfriend is Asian, and Nghiem says both she and her family are very comfortable with that.
"I think my boyfriend gets brownie points because he does speak Vietnamese," Nghiem says. "And my parents can speak to him in a different language. So I think they're much more accepting. I definitely got a better response with a Vietnamese guy than, for example, a white guy or a Hispanic guy, you know?"
Nghiem's friend and fellow student, Elaine Ly, has had a somewhat different experience. Her parents are ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. Her boyfriend is Asian, but he's Mien, descended from refugees in the Laotian highlands. And Elaine's parents have issues with that.
"They come to me and say, 'How come you didn't find a Chinese boy or something?' " Ly says. [...]
None of this surprises Daniel Lichter, a Cornell University sociologist who studies interracial marriage patterns. Lichter says America's growing immigrant population gives today's children of immigrants more choices when picking a partner.

So! Another advantage of excessively multicultural immigration is more opportunity for young people to choose a marriage partner of their precise tribe! Note how the ethnic Chinese family rejected the Mien boyfriend -- Asian, but not the right flavor. Anything but assimilation, except for the money part. They like the money well enough.

And here's son-of-immigrants Benny Goodman and his orchestra, Sing Sing Sing from Hollywood Hotel. The official website has some tunes as well.

• • •

Citizens arrest 27 day laborers at Rowland Heights-area Home Depot [5/30/09]
Can we have another cheer for diversity?

INDUSTRY - Officials from several area restaurants have made citizen's arrests on 27 day laborers at the Home Depot on Gale Avenue in Industry, authorities said Thursday.
Officials from businesses near the Home Depot at Gale and Fullerton Road near Rowland Heights recently complained that laborers were urinating in public and harassing customers in the parking lot. [...]
The General Manager of Frisco's Diner denied being one of the restaurants involved in the citizen's arrest, but he said people from his store have complained about day laborers.
"They are kind of an eyesore in front of our business," said General Manager Frank Millan. "I have customers that are sometimes afraid to go out to their cars because (laborers) are surrounding the area. It is bad for all businesses around here."

• • •

Immigration 103 Trailer [5/30/09]
Directly below is a six-minute trailer for a longer video, although the piece is pretty self-explanatory for a preview.

Here is the entire video piece (34 minutes) online at Immigration 103 -- American Trauma: Jobs and the Economy:

• • •

Administration opposes Uighurs' release in US [5/29/09]
Good news here: an attack of sanity at the White House in the matter of the Chinese Muslim terrorists being held in Guantanamo. The plan had been to simply let them go on American streets like they were immigrants. (See my blog item from earlier May, Release of Uighur Terrorists Still Likely). Now the White House is beginning to understand that Gitmo alum perhaps should not be the newest visa category.

The Obama administration, picking up the argument of its predecessor, is opposing the release of Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay into the United States.
In papers filed with the Supreme Court late Friday, the administration says a group of Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) are being lawfully held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba even though they are not considered enemy combatants. [...]
A federal judge determined in October that the Uighurs should be freed because the Pentagon no longer considered them enemy combatants. U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said they should be allowed into this country because the administration could find no other country willing to accept them.

See also the remarks of Andrew McCarthy, a former terrorist prosecutor, Uighurs: Sometimes, the Obama Friday Night Bad News Dump Is Bad for the Left.

The Obama Justice Department told the Supreme Court this evening that the Uighurs have no right to be released into the United States.
The Uighurs, Chinese Muslim detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, received terrorist training at al Qaeda affiliated camps (from an organization formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law) and were captured after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. They are the Left's combatant cause célèbre. The military took the incoherent position that they were trained al Qaeda terrorists but that their real beef was with China, not us. Thus, the federal courts have held that they are not enemy combatants. The government has been trying to relocate them for years but no country will take the remaining 17 — other than China, where our treaty obligations arguably forbid us from sending them because there is reason to believe they'd be persecuted.
Of course, it's one thing to say that they are not enemy combatants and should therefore be released. It is quite another thing, though, to say that they should be released into the United States (which, because of their terrorist affiliations, would violate federal immigration law). But as Cliff

noted

stellar work

Standard,

here

The good news is the Obama administration is not yet ready to release trained Muslim terrorists into American neighborhoods. The bad news is how much effort was required to convince them it was a really bad idea.

• • •

Pew Study: Most Hispanic Children in U.S. Have At Least One Foreign-Born Parent [5/28/09]
A lot of this report is comparing generations of hispanic kiddies, but the important facts have to do with the population explosion of hispanics. Demography is cruel, if you let if take over your society.

A new study from the Pew Hispanic Center is showing that a majority of Hispanic children in the United States have at least one parent who is foreign born.
The study, released today, also concludes that about a quarter of all Hispanic children have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.
The phenomenon coincides with a major population boom of Hispanics in the United States since 1980. More than 20 percent of all children in the United States are Hispanic, compared to about 9 percent in 1980. By 2025, the figure is expected to hit 30 percent, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report shows that 52 percent of the nation's 16 million Hispanic children are "second generation," meaning they were born in the United States to least one foreign-born parent. That's up from 30 percent in 1980.

See the report: Latino Children: A Majority Are U.S.-Born Offspring of Immigrants

For more about the perils of unrestrained population growth of a certain flavor, see Prof Larry Harrison's article in the Christian Science Monitor, What will America stand for in 2050?. Prof Harrison has written on the subject of Latin American culture and how it has made those societies less economically successful than the United States. (See his chart comparing progress-prone versus progress-resistant cultures.)

• • •

Two Holy Land Foundation defendants sentenced to 65 years [5/27/09]
In December of last year, I wrote about the important Holy Land Foundation trial, Media Snoozes While Jihadi Terrorists Infest America that took place in Dallas. In that trial, some of the founders of the HLF were found guilty of supplying the Hamas organization with $12 million to pursue terrorist activities. It is illegal to provide financial support to designated terror groups like Hamas.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis on Wednesday morning handed down sentences that will likely mean two founders of the Holy Land Foundation will spend the rest of their lives behind bars for financing the terrorist group Hamas.
Shukri Abu Baker, 50, of Garland was ordered to serve 65 years in prison as sentencing began for five men convicted on charges in the largest terrorism financing case in American history. Another founder, Ghassan Elashi, 55, of Richardson, was sentenced to 65 years in prison.

Hamas has been murdering mostly Israelis, so Americans may not think a group like HLF is that big a problem for this country. But the Holy Land Foundation has had bigger fish to fry, as noted by reporting from the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The evidence showed that HLF was part of a broad Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy in the United States called the Palestine Committee, which was to serve Hamas with "media, money and men." Those exhibits show the depth of Muslim Brotherhood activity here, which at its height included a think tank in Virginia, a propaganda arm in Texas and Chicago, and a political operation that continues to exert influence today.
It also led to the discovery of a Brotherhood memorandum from 1991 that describes the group's goal in America. It called for a "civilization-jihadist process" and a "grand jihad" that aimed at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within ... so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a Palestine Committee legacy. Last year, the FBI decided to cut off communication with CAIR due to concerns about the evidence showing the organization's Hamas roots.

In addition, see the Investigative Project's map of Islamic terror activity in the United States. It's all over the place.

• • •

American Bar Association Profile: Sonia Sotomayor [5/27/09]
The ABA featured Sotomayor as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month 2000 and the bio contained details of her associations...

In addition to her work on the bench, Judge Sotomayor is an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York Women's Bar Association, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage, and the National Council of La Raza. She has received many honors including, most recently, an award from the National Association of Women Lawyers.

La Raza translates to Das Volk in German and The Race in English, and Sotomayor's membership accords with her 2001 Berkeley speech, Raising the Bar:

our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life

• • •

Politician's Novel Idea for Mexican Tourism: Statue of Swine Flu Survivor [5/26/09]
What is it about Mexico and public relations? The Mexicans always get an "F" in that subject.
In the most recent episode of putting their worst foot forward, a local official proposed appealing to tourists by reminding them of the recent flu outbreak that hit Mexico the hardest, with nearly 100 deaths.

MEXICO CITY - Edgar Hernandez, the Mexican kindergartner who is the first person known to have contracted the swine flu now circling the globe, may soon have a statue erected in his honor in the mountain village where he lives.
Gov. Fidel Herrera of the coastal state of Veracruz said the statue of Edgar, 5, could help attract tourists to La Gloria, a poor village where hundreds of residents came down with mysterious flulike symptoms beginning in late winter, in what experts say may have been the beginning of the spread of the new influenza strain. As of Monday, the World Health Organization had tabulated 12,515 confirmed cases of swine flu, with 91 deaths.
The Mexican government has been pushing the view that the flu strain originated elsewhere and was brought to Mexico, which epidemiologists say remains a possibility. Mr. Herrera, an eccentric politician from the opposition Revolutionary Institutional Party, agrees.
He considers Edgar to be not "Patient Zero," the source of a global outbreak, but rather the first person in the world known to have survived the virus. In an interview with local reporters on Sunday, the governor likened the statue, which might be made of concrete or bronze, to the Manneken Pis in Brussels, the sculpture of a little boy peeing in a fountain.

Little Edgar is a cute kid, but featuring him as a pissing fountain is not that inviting, particularly when it reminds travelers of a deadly illness. Even the Mexican government recognizes that a more conventional ad campaign is the way to go.
In comparison with the hare-brained Mexican scheme, the Brussels piss fountain, though an odd item, is an actual piece of history and has been in existence for several hundred years.
Mexico has been uniformly ham-handed in public relations, which is at least partially due to years of Washington's coddling, so they don't know what to do when someone says No. So when China decided to quarantine Mexicans present in the PRC, Mexican government officials went apoplectic.
Mexico really wants not to be a dirtbag backwater, but they are years into a shooting war against drug cartels where the outcome is still in doubt.
In an earlier example of PR failure, the government issued a series of racist postage stamps based on a Sambo-esque comic character from Mexican pop culture. But the Mexicans didn't know what to do when American blacks and others raised a ruckus about the racism.
However, when Mexes don't like representations of their precious selves, they squawk up a storm, which is why we don't see Speedy Gonzalez any more on TV.

• • •

Best Wishes on Memorial Day, with Deep Gratitude to Those Whose Sacrifice Has Kept Us Free

• • •

Why Muslims Like Hitler, but Not Mozart [5/24/09]
Fjordman smacks down Muslims for their essential barbarism and also castigates Europeans for a curious inattention to their own cultural strengths.
When the Taliban takes over a place, simple pleasures like listening to music and kite-flying are prohibited, with serious punishment for those who disobey. Likewise women's rights and education.
Hating music really is barbaric; there's no way around that.

As a native European, it is strange to notice how many (non-Muslim) Asians apparently appreciate my civilization more these days than so-called intellectuals in my own country do. It is challenging to explain how the West could make so many advances in the past and yet be as stupid as it currently is. The question of what went wrong with the West is far more interesting than what went wrong with the Islamic world. The best answer I can come up with is that maybe our current flaws are related to our past virtues, at least indirectly. For instance, being stubborn can be a strength or a weakness, depending upon the situation. The West is a non-traditionalist civilization. We have unquestionably made advances that no other civilization has done before us, despite what some critics claim, but perhaps the price we pay for this is that we also make mistakes that nobody has done before us. Organized science is a Western invention. Organized national suicide, too, is a Western invention. The Western university system once represented a great comparative advantage for Europe vis-a-vis other civilizations. Today that same system is undermining the very civilization that gave birth to it.
Since European civilization is so far the only civilization to have had a truly global impact, this means that all other civilizations have to face the challenge of dealing with a layer of impulses and ideas which are not their own. There is no doubt that this has been a disruptive process in many cases, but it is also true that different non-Western cultures deal very differently with the Western challenge and appropriate very different parts of its heritage. [...]
Despotism comes quite natural to Islamic culture. When confronted with the European tradition, many Muslims freely prefer Adolf Hitler to Rembrandt, Michelangelo or Beethoven. Westerners don't force them to study Mein Kampf more passionately than Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Goethe's Faust; they choose to do so themselves. Millions of (non-Muslim) Asians now study Mozart's piano pieces. Muslims, on the other hand, like Mr. Hitler more, although he represents one of the most evil ideologies that have ever existed in Europe. The fact that they usually like the Austrian Mr. Hitler more than the Austrian Mr. Mozart speaks volumes about their culture. Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and Middle Eastern Muslims have been confronted with the same body of ideas, yet choose to appropriate radically different elements from it, based upon what is compatible with their own culture.

As a reminder of the beauty of Mozart, here's Cecilia Bartoli with a little ditty from the Marriage of Figaro.

• • •

Arrests in Chinese slavery case [5/24/09]
The despotic People's Republic of China continues to be a cesspool of horrors against the weak. When you look beyond the Potemkin village of the Olympics, there is a cruel Communist regime, where the state provides little protection for the individual.
As the article mentions, the horrors at brick kilns have been going on for a while. You have wonder why a crackdown took so long.

State media said the brick kiln owner had bought 32 such people and forced them to work without pay.
The victims, aged between 25 and 45, were freed in a police raid in April.
The case echoes a scandal in 2007, when more than 1,000 labourers - including children were found working in brutal conditions in central Shanxi province.
Following that scandal, China announced a nationwide crackdown on enslavement and child labour.
Under terrible conditions, 32 mentally disabled people were forced to work in brick kilns in Jieshou city, in Anhui province, according to the Xinhua news agency.
The 10 are "suspected of beating and treating the mentally handicapped people like slaves," a local police official was quoted as saying.

• • •

15,000 Somalis? Tally seems low to some [5/23/09]
Columbus Ohio is the city unwise enough to accept many thousands of Somalis. The exact number is of some dispute. (Refugee Resettlement Watch reasonably posits that it's all about the money, as is strongly hinted in the article anyway: If you want federal grants it helps to inflate the numbers.)
Following is from the Columbus Dispatch article...

Past estimates of Franklin County's Somali population have ranged from 30,000 to 80,000. But a new report says that it's more like 15,000.
An accurate number helps government agencies funnel funds for social services -- English classes, jobs programs, etc. -- to specific groups.
"Is it possible we have a grant proposal that says 40,000 Somalis? Yes," said Angie Plummer, executive director of Community Refugee and Immigration Services.
But she said that grant proposals must include the specific number of people an agency expects to serve with the funds. That means while a grant proposal might refer to a population estimate, it will ask for funds to serve a specific number.
No one could say how much money has flowed in to help Somalis based on population estimates.
Evelyn Bissonnette, Ohio's refugee coordinator, said the federal government provides $850 per individual to put them in homes and pay for administrative costs. Ohio also received $6 million in federal funds for cash and medical assistance in 2008 for all refugees.

Any number from that benighted culture is too many. Consider this recent item from the BBC about hand-choppy sharia law in the Horn of Africa: Somali justice - Islamist-style.

• • •

SoCal gang members indicted in racist shootings [5/22/09]
Hispanic gangsters have been practicing ethnic cleansing against black Americans for years. There have been prosecutions before (4 Los Angeles Latino Gang Members Convicted of Anti-Black Conspiracy, 2006), but nothing of this scope.

Federal racketeering indictments unsealed Thursday charge that a Latino street gang has waged a racist campaign to eliminate black people from a Southern California city through attempted murders and other crimes.
Five indictments charged a total of 147 members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, and federal and local agencies arrested 63 of them by early Thursday, U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien told a press conference.
O'Brien asserted it was "the largest gang takedown in United States history," but he did not immediately elaborate.
The indictments detail attempted murder, kidnapping, firearms, narcotics and other charges related to attacks by the gang, which primarily operates in Hawaiian Gardens, a city of about 15,000 people in southeastern Los Angeles County.
"(Varrio Hawaiian Gardens) gang members take pride in their racism and often refer to the VHG Gang as the 'Hate Gang,'" the main indictment states. "VHG gang members have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African-Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes against African-Americans."

See also Largest Gang Bust in US History:

• • •

Senate Committee Chairman: Health care reform won't include illegal immigrants [5/22/09]
I guarantee the Mexes won't let this stand without a fight.

WASHINGTON - Health care reforms that aim to insure every American won't provide insurance for illegal immigrants and may not address the cost to state and local governments for providing medical care to this large group of the uninsured, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mt., said Thursday.
"We're not going to cover undocumented aliens, undocumented workers," Baucus said. "ThatÕs too politically explosive."
Universal health insurance is a key aim of health reform proposals backed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress, and bills being assembled in House and Senate committees want to reach that goal through a mix of incentives and mandates. Illegal immigrants, however, account for somewhere between 15 and 22 percent of the estimated 47 million U.S. residents without health insurance. [...]
"In light of what's happening right now with the flu pandemic, it's pretty clear that, for any health care system to work, it has to cover everyone residing in the United States," said Dr. Jamie Torres, a New York-based physician who is director of Latinos for National Health Insurance.

People with sick kids come to America to get free-to-them first-class medical care. A couple examples include Jesica Santillan (who got four organ transplants but died anyway) and Ana Puente who has received at least three transplants at a cost of a couple million dollars. Illegal Mexican Marguerita Toribio has gotten 17 years of free-to-her dialysis treatments at a cost of to taxpayers of half a million dollars.
If ObamaCare includes illegal aliens, then there will be no sick child or adult left in the third world within a couple years. And the cost to taxpayers would be unimaginable.
See also Roy Beck's blog remarks, Key Democrat says national health care can NOT include illegal aliens -- But amnesty would lock in the illegal health cost.

• • •

Murder suspect here illegally [5/21/09]
Two more innocent young people, Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson, were killed by a previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien. The crash occurred April 17 in Huntsville, Alabama.

The man accused of killing two local teens in a car crash last month has been identified as an illegal immigrant and will face deportation after facing murder charges in Madison County, jail officials said Friday.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on 25-year-old Felix Dominquez Ortega, who has been in jail since his arrest.
Ortega has been charged with two counts of murder, driving without a license, possession of a forged instrument and a seatbelt violation. Police said he was apparently drunk when he fled from officers April 17 and crashed his truck into another vehicle at Whitesburg Drive and Airport Road. He killed 16-year-old Leigh Anna Jimmerson of Grissom High School and 19-year-old Tad Mattle, a recent Grissom grad. [...]
Police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Ortega was wanted at the time of crash for an outstanding warrant for driving under the influence. Officers contacted ICE shortly after Ortega's arrest, because he provided forged identification.
It took police, jail administrators and ICE agents several weeks to determine Ortega's citizenship because of his multiple aliases.

More than 700 people attended Tad's and Leigh Anna's funerals.
Leigh Anna was a sophomore at Grissom High School and was part of the color guard. Tad was also involved in the band as a drummer until he graduated in May 2008. He pursued automotive repair in high school and planned to get a mechanical engineering degree at UAH. He was also an Eagle Scout and an accomplished vertical caver.

The victims were killed when Mattle's Supra was rear-ended by Felix Ortega's truck and the car burst into flames.

• • •

Johnston man convicted for murder, DWI [5/21/09]
The previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien who killed 7-year-old Marcus Lassiter in North Carolina last year was quickly found guilty and sentenced.

A Johnston County man was found guilty this morning of second-degree murder and driving while impaired for hitting and killing a 7-year-old Selma boy in April 2008.
Hipolito Camora Hernandez of Parkertown Road in Four Oaks was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison.
A witness told the state Highway Patrol that Marcus Lassiter was standing on the side of two-lane Heath Road north of Four Oaks when a car lost control on a curve, ran onto the shoulder and struck him. Investigators determined the driver came into the curve at about 70 mph, 25 mph above the posted speed limit.
Hernandez had been charged with drunken driving at least four times before the accident that killed Marcus, but he had never been convicted. At the time of the crash, he was wanted by police for failing to show up in court to answer to one of the previous charges, according to prosecutors.
A judge sentenced Hernandez to at least 16 years, 4 months in prison and to a maximum of more than 20 years.

For background on this disturbing case, see my 2008 blog Another Child Sacrificed on the Altar of Open Borders.

• • •

Judy Chu defeats Gil Cedillo but faces runoff in 32nd Congressional District [5/20/09]
The evil One Bill Gil smacked down -- how sweet is that?! Apparently he believed that his Energizer Bunny pursuit of driver licence/IDs for illegal aliens would win a seat in the United States House of Representatives. Fortunately not.

From the start, the race was generally seen as a two-way contest between Cedillo, a labor union leader before his 1998 election to the state Assembly and later the state Senate, and Judy Chu, a former member of the Monterey Park City Council and the Assembly.
Both are liberal Democrats with similar views and strong ties to labor in the working-class district. But their candidacies were testing the power of ethnic politics in the district, home to large numbers of Latinos -- about half the registered voters -- and a growing population of Asian Americans.
Cedillo, backed by such local politicians as Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Sheriff Lee Baca, worked to mobilize his Latino base. He raised about $717,000.

It was a battle of the Tribes, California's model of politics for the 21st century, and the Chinese won this round while the Mexicans lost.
But don't worry about State Senator Cedillo's future. After he term-limits out in 2010, Arnold will probably reward him with a cushy sinecure on the Garbage Board ($132K salary for one meeting/month) with other failed pols like San Francisco's Carol Migden (the addled Senator who was voted out of office after accruing a reputation as a tyrant in her Assembly office and having a driving escapade of careening for 30 miles in a State SUV).
No rejected political hack needs to live on only their generous pension. A whole system of governmental golden parachutes exist to protect dejected exes -- that's the Sacramento way!

• • •

70% of Britons want large cuts in immigration [5/20/09]
Britons are fed up also.

Seven out of ten adults want a massive cut in immigration, a poll has revealed. [...]
The poll, commissioned by MigrationWatch for the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, was published on the eve of the release of immigration figures today.
It found that 79 per cent of people were concerned or very concerned about immigration. Seventy per cent of the 2,072 respondents favoured cutting levels by 80 per cent or more.
Of those, 17 per cent said net immigration should be brought below 50,000 a year - a level last seen in the early 1990s.
Another 39 per cent favoured a policy of zero net immigration, with the numbers settling in the UK matching the numbers emigrating. Sixteen per cent said the number of immigrants should be lower than those leaving.

Get that last bit? A substantial number want immigration to be over, period.

• • •

News 8 Investigates: Airline mechanics who can't read English [5/19/09]
This is a scary story. English is the universal language of aviation, and that include repair manuals. (Video version here.)

Repairing airplanes is a complicated business. Airplanes have many manuals. Typically, when mechanics repair a part, they open the manual, consult the book, and make the repair step-by-step, as if it were a recipe book.
They make a list of every action they take, so the next person to fix the plane (as well as the people who fly it) will know exactly what has been done.
If mechanics don't speak English, the international language of aviation, they can't read the manual and they can't record their activities.
There are more than 236 FAA-certified aircraft repair stations in Texas, according to the FAA's Web site. News 8 has learned that hundreds of the mechanics working in those shops do not speak English and are unable to read repair manuals for today's sophisticated aircraft.
Former FAA inspector Bill McNease told News 8 he regularly encountered applicants for pilots' licenses who tried to pretend they could speak English - but could not.
"When I was based in Dallas, I had that happen every week," McNease said. "It was not uncommon at all to have foreign flight students. We had mechanics, but I handled the pilot end of it.... and I turned down people every week because they couldn't speak English." [...]
The root of the problem is money, mechanics say. A certified mechanic can earn upwards of $25 an hour in Texas. Technicians who can't speak English are often hired for less than $10, according to mechanics interviewed by News 8.

• • •

Legislature's tab hit $252 million in 2007-08 [5/19/09]
As a California resident, I have had the growing suspicion that I wasn't getting my money's worth. Come to find out, it's worse than I thought.

According to the state Department of Finance, the 2007-08 operating budget for California's 40 senators and their staffers was $107 million.
The budget for the 80 Assembly members and staff was $145 million.
Total cost for both houses: $252 million.
Ten years ago, the total budget for both houses was $158 million.
As for where the money goes?
For starters, there are the legislators' salaries - $116,208 a year, the highest in the nation and far outpacing No. 2 Michigan, which pays $79,650.
California lawmakers also get a car allowance, free gas and $173 per day in living expenses during the legislative session if they reside outside Sacramento.
Then comes the legislative staff.
Each lawmaker gets at least eight. Those who serve on committees get more.
Add in all the various policy analysts, number crunchers, lawyers and aides who work for the Legislature's numerous committees, and the support staff for the Senate and Assembly numbers about 1,800 - with an overall payroll of $180 million.

The cost of all this high living figures out to $2.6 million per state senator and $1.8 million per Assembly member.

For an excellent analysis of Tuesday's special election consisting of six propositions, see California Reckoning.

A major part of all the increased outlay of funds is the spending on illegal aliens, now $13 billion annually.

• • •

Intel ads spotlight 'rock star' engineers [5/18/09]
Intel is running an ad that some Americans may find objectionable -- I certainly did. But C-Net was happy to spew industry propaganda.

Intel's "rock star" ads will try to show that Intel is more than just microprocessors--a theme of its broader ad campaign to launch on Monday.
One of the first Internet-based ads focuses on Ajay Bhatt, an Intel Fellow who was one of the principal engineers behind the development of USB, a crucial Intel technology used in virtually all PCs today. (Intel engineers in the ads are personified by hired actors. "Several of the engineers we're personifying confided that acting isn't within their comfort zone," said Sandra Lopez, Intel's global consumer marketing manager in a statement.)
The new global "Sponsors of Tomorrow" campaign is Intel's biggest marketing campaign in three years and the first that focuses on the Intel brand and not a processor product.

Check it out

Where to start?! First of all, the "rock star" ad is thinly disguised diversity propaganda to make us submit to workplace displacement of citizens by foreigners. The ad shows properly indoctrinated American workers swooning in adoration at the sight of an Indian who is clearly superior to them; the Ameriacns are submissive and the Indian is dominant. One message is how the cubicle employees should feel lucky that Intel allows them to work at all, particularly in the presence of an august being like Ajay Bhatt.
The ad is hugely sexist. There are admiring men in the rather sparse break room, but women are going faint with hysteria. The young blonde at first shreiks in frenzy and then clutches the arm of her friend so she doesn't melt into a puddle on the floor. You can't have a "rock star" without groupies apparently.
The Indian man portraying Ajay Bhatt walks with a swagger and exudes arrogance. Why would a young American man even try to compete with an alpha male of such dominance? Forget IT or engineering, kid, and study plumbing instead because there is no future for citizens in tech.
Of course, in pitching Indian superiority, Intel is protecting its bottom line, which has gotten the benefit of thousands of H-1b workers. Campanies want Americans to accept that business is not willing to pay middle-class wages to skilled citizens and this ad is a part of that education campaign.

For a non-revisionist view of Silicon Valley's history, you can see the documentary Triumph of the Nerds online.

• • •

Scholars Plan U.S.' First Four-Year Accredited Islamic College [5/17/09]
Another place-holder in the march toward unwise diversity is this item.

PLAINSBORO, N.J. - A group of American Muslims, led by two prominent scholars, is moving closer to fulfilling a vision of founding the first four-year accredited Islamic college in the United States, what some are calling a "Muslim Georgetown."
Advisers to the project have scheduled a June vote to decide whether the proposed Zaytuna College can open in the fall of next year, a major step toward developing the faith in America.
Imam Zaid Shakir and Sheik Hamza Yusuf of California have spent years planning the school, which will offer a liberal arts education and training in Islamic scholarship. Shakir, a California native, sees the school in the tradition of other religious groups that formed universities to educate leaders and carve a space in the mainstream of American life.
"As a faith community our needs aren't any different than the needs of any other faith community," Shakir told the Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals, as he sought donations at a recent conference near Princeton, N.J. "As Muslims, we need to develop institutions to allow us to perpetuate our values."

We already know that mosques are major recruitment centers for jihadists and disseminating propaganda against America. I suppose a "college" will make surveillance more convenient for the FBI however.

• • •

84% Say English Should Be America's Official Language [5/16/09]
Americans don't want to be bilingual or be forced to speak Spanish. No way, Jose. The invader Mexicans can take their endless demands and their language and get on home.

Eighty-four percent (84%) of Americans say English should be the official language of the United States. Only nine percent (9%) disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Seven percent (7%) are not sure.
The support for English as the countryÕs official language remains steady from three years ago.
Eighty-one percent (81%) say a U.S. company should be allowed to require employees to speak English on the job, up four points from November 2007. Thirteen percent (13%) disagree.
Eighty-two percent (82%) also reject the idea that requiring people to speak English is a form of racism or bigotry, up three points from 2007. Just 10% think such a requirement is racist or bigoted.
Support for making English the nationÕs official language is strong across partisan lines. The concept is supported by 96% of Republicans, 74% of Democrats and 85% of adults not affiliated with either major party.

Despite the overwhelming preference of the public for English as the official language and the requirement that legal immigrants be able to speak English to become naturalized, taxpayers are forced to pay for the production of multilingual ballots. It's an outrage and an insult to the tradition of patriotic assimilation that the majority of Americans still want.

• • •

Immigration reformers picket local Wendy's [5/16/09]
Congrats to the folks at Oregonians for Immigration Reform for connecting the dots between a crime and the lack of workplace enforcement, particularly checking the status of workers.

MILWAUKIE, Ore. - Police are looking into a rape at a Milwaukie Wendy's where the alleged attacker, a Wendy's employee, is believed to be in the United States illegally.
The restaurant owner says he checked out the employee's work documents when he was hired and they looked legitimate.
Now, some lawmakers and immigration reform supporters say want more than that level of effort from business owners as well as legal changes for immigration enforcement.
They not only want the laws changed, but they immediately want the owner of the Wendy's to start using the electronic 'e-verify" identification system to check the immigration status of employees.
Protesters outside the restaurant Friday are encouraging customers not to even enter the business until the owner agrees to screen his workers.
The group behind the protest is Oregonians for Immigration Reform.
Protesters were handing out fliers to customers telling them about the rape that reportedly happened in the Wendy's bathroom.
Suspect Evanivaldo Alejo Sebastian is believed to be an illegal immigrant.

In addition, Accused Wendy's Rapist Has Prior Arrests

Evanivaldo Alejo-Sebastian was arrested twice before -- once in 2006 and once in 2007 -- in the Kansas City area. The victim's mom was not pleased to learn that the accused is an illegal alien.
The protesters make a good point: E-verify not only thwarts illegal alien job thieves but its universal and mandatory use would make workplaces safer.
Offhand I can think of a couple of murders where an illegal alien became acquainted with his victim on the job. One terrible example was college freshman Jenny Garcia who was knifed to death in her own home by David Diaz Morales, a man arrested for child molestation who nevertheless worked at the same restaurant as Garcia in sanctuary city Austin.
Another was a young mother, Vinessa Hoera, who rejected the amorous workplace advances of Guatemalan alien Faustino Chavez who then raped her and slashed her throat numerous times in Suffolk County New York.

• • •

Bail $1 million in fatal crash [5/15/09]
The tragic toll of preventable deaths of innocent children by dangerous illegal alien drivers continues. Four-year-old Josie Bluhm was taken off life support on Wednesday in Omaha after the family car was stuck the previous day by red-light runner Eleazar Rangel-Ochoa.
It is remarkable that after so many cases of illegal aliens being in custody and released that this sort of egregiously bad law enforcement goes on as before. The accused killer was convicted four times on DUI charges and his license was revoked, plus he was denied a state ID in 2004 when he was discovered to have a fraudulant Social Security number, yet no one in authority bothered to contact the feds to deport him. Is Omaha an unofficial sanctuary city?

Despite repeated trips through Douglas County's criminal justice system, Rangel-Ochoa wasnÕt identified as an illegal immigrant until after this week's crash.
Rangel-Ochoa's license was reinstated in June 2000 after a driving-under-the-influence offense.
His license was revoked for 15 years after he was convicted in 2003 of third-offense DUI.
Federal authorities will pick up Rangel-Ochoa as soon as the local court system is done with him, said Tim Counts, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Federal judges will determine when or if Rangel-Ochoa is deported.
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said it is the role of federal authorities to identify which inmates are illegal immigrants. He said he is unsure how Rangel-Ochoa made it in and out of jail so many times without authorities picking up on his status.

One report said the perp ran a red light because he was late for his job as a sheetrock hanger. You would think that an illegal alien driving with a suspended license would be a little bit careful. But he wasn't, because in his 14 years of residing in the United States and having several serious run-ins with the police, he had learned he had nothing to fear.

• • •

Indian dad avoids washing for 35 years: report [5/14/09]
India never fails in the diversity sweepstakes.

NEW DELHI (AFP) - - An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers reported.
Kailash "Kalau" Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a "fire bath" every evening when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.
"It's just like using water to take a bath," Kalau was reported as saying. "A fire bath helps kill germs and infection in the body."
Kalau, 63, from a village outside the holy city of Varanasi, outraged his family by refusing to take a ritual dip in the river Ganges even after his brother died five years ago.
"I still don't remember how it all began," he said in Saturday's edition of the paper. "I just know it started about 35 years ago."

No mention of Mr. Singh's wife's opinion about his unique personal hygiene and whether it adds to their marital experience.

Update: The excellent Weird India blog has a photo of Mr. Singh.

• • •

Italy does not want to become 'multi-ethnic' says Silvio Berlusconi [5/13/09]
Plain speaking of a non-PC nature is so refreshing in a politician. And rare.

Previous Left-wing governments had "opened the doors to clandestine migrants coming from other countries, with an idea of a multi-ethnic Italy," Mr Berlusconi said.
But that kind of society was "not our idea", he added, as he sought to reassure Italians who were alarmed at the number of immigrants pouring into the country, particularly from eastern Europe and Africa.

Interestingly, Sen Ted Kennedy promised that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 would not make America unduly diverse or ramp up population growth. Oh, well!

The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants.

In fact, people prefer to be around others who speak their language, share their values and understand their jokes. Human community, particularly loyalty, is based upon similarities, not differences. Tribalism is hard wired in human nature.
One small example is how liberals in San Francisco like to chat up diversity in the abstract but many send their kids to private schools, over 30 percent, the highest proportion in the state, if not the country.
Speaking of Mexifornia, thousands of citizens are fleeing every year to some place that still resembles America. People are voting against extreme diversity and Mexicanization with their feet.

• • •

Many workers' earnings stagnating or declining [5/12/09]
Falling wages are another sign that there are too many workers: remember supply and demand? Yet Washington continues to welcome on average around 138,000 more foreign workers every month.

Across the country, workers' earnings are stagnating or, in some cases, declining. For many Americans, the setbacks are all the more troubling because they have lost so much wealth in recent months, with the value of their homes and retirement packages falling.
Employers big and small have resorted to slashing hours, and once-unthinkable wage cuts. In March, staffing agencies that work for Microsoft Corp. agreed to a 10% reduction in their billing rate. In April, hotel operators in New York City asked unionized waiters, housekeepers and bellhops to reopen their contract and accept wage cuts. State governments such as Indiana's have frozen pay, while others, including those in Maryland and California, have furloughed employees.
According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, more than a third of Americans say they or someone in their household have had their hours or pay cut in the last few months. That's an increase from a similar poll conducted in February.

Many nations in Europe, however, have adjusted immigration levels to deal with today's economic situation: Europe Falls Out of Love with Labor Migration (Der Spiegel). But not Washington. Whose side are the elected representatives on anyway?

In other labor news, exploitation is big business worldwide... UN: forced laborers losing $21 billion a year

Labor can't be too cheap or too exploitable for today's Masters of the Universe who want a borderless planet.

• • •

In Disneyland's shadow, a rising new demographic [5/12/09]
Anaheim used to be thought of as an quintessentially American community. Now it's just another outpost of Mexico, only with fewer cars in the yards.

Anaheim's Latino population has more than tripled since 1980 and now stands at 186,000, making Orange County's second-largest city the latest to become majority Latino -- at 54.5% -- according to new census estimates.
But unlike Southern California's impoverished gateways for Latino immigration -- such as Los Angeles' Pico-Union neighborhood or Santa Ana, one of the nation's most heavily Latino large cities, whose proportion of foreign-born residents has been ranked second only to Miami's -- Anaheim is pointed toward a future as a middle-class Latino community like Whittier and Downey, demographers say.
Some, like Perez, point to the emergence of a new social order, one in which a full spectrum of Latinos can find a place, from the recent immigrant to the newly minted middle-class family.
"So maybe there's been an exodus of middle-class people from other backgrounds," said Perez, a political director for a union. "But now there's larger diversity for Latinos... there's more access socially."

That's right, white and black Americans left the place, because they didn't want to live in the local Mexifornia. How dreary.

• • •

SEIU may be linked to ultimatum on withholding stimulus funds [5/11/09]
The Service Employees International Union is well known as representing the interests of illegal aliens. The SEIU contributed more than $33 million to the Obama campaign (see below).
Now the Los Angeles Times reports that the union used its political pull to screw California out of billions of dollars in stimulus funds as the state is failing financially.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Officials in the governor's office say a politically powerful union may have had inappropriate influence over the Obama administration's decision to withhold billions of dollars in federal stimulus money from California if the state does not reverse a scheduled wage cut for the labor group's workers.
The officials say they are particularly troubled that the Service Employees International Union, which lobbied the federal government to step in, was included in a conference call in which state and federal officials reviewed the wage cut and the terms of the stimulus package. [...]
During the call, state officials say, they were asked to defend the $74-million cut scheduled to take effect July 1. The cut lowers the state's maximum contribution to home healthcare workers' pay from $12.10 per hour to $10.10.
The California officials on the call, who requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing the Obama administration, said they needed the savings to help balance the state budget.
The wages go to some 300,000 people who care for the elderly and ill in their homes. Those workers collectively pay millions of dollars in dues each month to SEIU and another union.
SEIU was among the biggest donors to President Obama's campaign, contributing $33 million. The union is also consistently among the biggest donors to Democrats in Sacramento and had aggressively fought the wage cut during state budget negotiations.

The wages in question are for the In-Home Supportive Services program, which was recently recognized as an easy scam: Fraud infects state in-home care program [LA Times, April 13, 2009].

$5.42 billion

Some critics of the program say politics has blocked efforts to combat fraud. The program has become a steady source of revenue for the Service Employees International Union, among the most powerful interest groups in the Capitol, as well as a second union, the United Domestic Workers of America.

The in-home care program is just the sort of scam that would be attractive to illegal aliens and immigrants, although I can't find any direct investigations of that aspect. However, medical fraud in general is a big draw for foreigners (e.g. Elderly immigrants used in Medicare scam), so it's reasonable to assume they are overrepresented among the in-home care scammers.
So the upshot overall is that the SEIU is happy to screw California out of billions of dollars in order to maintain the wages of a program brimming with fraud that fills the union coffers.

• • •

Teen pleads guilty in Marilyn Bethell murder [5/10/09]
Here's another preventable death that can be chalked up to misplaced do-gooderism among immigration enthusiasts. The young Sudanese, Gareng Deng (inset photo), who murdered Marilyn Bethell (main photo) was not an illegal alien, but a refugee with a strong imprint of violence from childhood. He was damaged goods, not a good bet for assimilation on any level. But stupid America puts the welcome mat out for just about anyone.

Gareng Deng grew up in Sudan, surrounded by violence. When he came to the United States, he brought destruction with him.
Marilyn Bethell, 47, lived quietly on the far northeast side of Aurora. Somehow, the substance abuse counselor became Deng's target.
Deng, 17, pleaded guilty Friday to participating in Bethell's 2005 murder. He will spend almost all of the next 33 years in prison. [...]
During those hearings, it was revealed that as a child in war-torn Sudan, Deng witnessed atrocities and genocide. He saw a man's arm chopped off. He walked into the desert with his uncle to buy guns.
The World Relief Organization eventually helped Deng's family come to the U.S. But once here, Deng got involved in more and more serious crimes, culminating in Bethell's murder.

Abused children who experience violence often grow into violent, abusive adults. It's basic psychology that no one questions, except in the immigration/refugee milieu. War-affected children commonly experience anger and post-traumatic stress disorder as they grow older.
It's entirely irresponsible of refugee agencies to deposit these little time bombs into American communities with no psychological counseling and expect everything will work out somehow. It doesn't, and only a fool would expect a good result.

In Salt Lake City, a Sudanese refugee drove his car into a group of children on thei way home from school last Wednesday. Fortunately, none of the injuries were very serious. Police: Motorist aimed at group of Kearns students

Luka Wall Kang

Kang told police that he suffered from depression and was frustrated over his lack of employment

Of course, it is similarly the worst sort of public policy to continue bringing thousands of unskilled third-world people to America in a terrible economy. It is no kindness to them and is dangerous to the public.

• • •

Elvira Arellano Runs for Mexican Congress [5/09/09]
How wonderful for Elvira that she can fulfull her Mexican Dream! Life does go on after deportation, contrary to some descriptions of horror.

Among the better known candidates running for Congress is Elvira Arellano, the deported activist from the United States who came to symbolize the face of the new immigrant movement. Taking refuge in a Chicago church in August 2006, Arellano defied a deportation order and US immigration authorities for one year in an unsuccessful attempt to remain with her young son. In August 2007, she was arrested and sent back to Mexico after appearing at an immigrant rights rally in Los Angeles.
Almost two years later, Arellano is on the campaign trail in Tijuana, Baja California, where she is the candidate for Congressional District #4 on the ticket of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Keeping true to her word to keep the migrant issue alive in the public eye, the energetic activist is stressing immigrant rights issues in Mexico's 2009 political campaign. In comments last weekend,
Arellano said she is especially concerned about the fate of women migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the US, a journey that is often fraught with sexual assaults and other abuses.
"I am going to seek laws in Congress that protect women, and also that protect undocumented Central Americans who are treated like criminals in Mexico," Arellano said.

You go, Elvira! Mexican women need better protection from piggyman Mexican males.
Your unique Spanish-speaking talents were wasted in America anyway.

• • •

Lou Dobbs: Global Governance and 2nd Amendment assault [5/09/09]
The Democrats of the new administration openly admit they support the post-national ideology of one-world government, i.e. quietly retiring the Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect the citizens.

Here's the transcript from Lou Dobbs Tonight, May 1.

DOBBS: [May 1] is actually a day to honor our nation's rule by law. And the law's contributions to our freedoms and a reminder perhaps to some that this is first and foremost a nation of laws.
President Dwight Eisenhower established Law Day in 1958. It was made into law in 1961. Every president since has issued a Law Day proclamation. President Obama today issued his proclamation calling on Americans to acknowledge the importance, our legal system and to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.
May 1 is also foreign affairs day. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton marked the occasion with a town hall meeting for foreign service employees. Mrs. Clinton had, as well, a well, a comment or two about me. John Strausser (ph) who works at the Joint Forces Command asked the secretary if the administration should develop a concept of global governance first recommended by a U.N. commission back in the late '90s.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN STRAUSSER, JOINT FORCES COMMAND: I believe it still has a lot of very good proposals and needs to be updated but recommend to you considering global governance as that concept for this administration. Thank you.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), US SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I can just imagine what Lou Dobbs will say about that. (LAUGHTER)
STRAUSSER: You know what? Who cares about Lou Dobbs?
CLINTON: I agree with that. (END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Well, I'm sorry she agrees with that and, you know, I have to say that I would expect the secretary of state and anyone who is an employee of the Defense Department, certainly the secretary of -- the Department of State to perhaps be concerned about U.S. sovereignty and U.S. governance rather than global governance, just a thought for consideration. And of course I'll have a few more thoughts about the issue in the days and weeks ahead.

Has the Secretary of State forgotten that she swore an oath to protect our American way of law:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." Straightforward, is it not? Yet Secretary of State Clinton apparently thinks that the idea of retaining American sovereignty is an amusing laugh line.

• • •

BART lays out ambitious plans for new railcars [5/08/09]
Here in Califoria, we are galloping headlong into the future in many ways we never wanted, and in fact have tried to prevent.
Overpopulation changes life in numerous ways, from longer commute times to earlier water restrictions during droughts. More crowded public transportation (which we are exhorted to use, rather than cars) is another result.
The Bay Area Rapid Transportation system (BART) is getting a little less than cutting edge, and its leadership think some new, redesigned cars are the ticket. However, capacity rather than comfort is the guiding principle.

BART is set to embark on a $3.4 billion project to replace its existing trains with 700 new cars that will carry more people, move passengers through stations faster, and meet the needs of suburban and urban riders.
"This is a significant undertaking for this agency, one we don't even make every generation," BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said Thursday. Many of the 669 BART cars now in service have been running since the system opened in 1972. [...]
The agency has released a handful of conceptual designs, some of which show a very different BART car than what's now in use. In the most dramatic example, a row of poles runs down the middle of the train. Attached to the poles are pads on which passengers can lean. [...]
BART now carries about 350,000 riders a day. Projections show the number jumping past 500,000 by 2035.

One car design (shown below) provides "less traditional passenger accommodation in the form of leaning pads. Leaning pads or 'leaners' could potentially accommodate more passengers and facilitate passenger flows." It's not exactly inviting, particularly when riders face long distances. Current cars have traditional seats

The problem here is unrestrained population growth, fueled by immigration run amok. As I wrote in Paradise Lost: Crowdifornia 2008, the BART system has seen the world change around it.

Bay Area Standing Transit

completed

4.6 million

7.1 million

We northern Californians will be in even closer proximity to diversity, since we will be experiencing it sardine style, SRO on the new improved BART cars.

• • •

Holder: Terrorists won't be set free in U.S., or abroad [5/07/09]
The situation of the Uighur jihadists now imprisoned in Guantanamo has been bubbling along on a back burner of media attention. A few people have been sounding the alarm, such as Rep. Frank Wolf who spoke Monday and Tuesday on the floor of Congress against the administration's plan to release the Uighurs onto American streets.
The good news is growing attention. The bad news is weasel words from the Attorney General, based on the definition of the word "terrorist."

"We don't have any plans to release terrorists," Holder testified at a Senate hearing on the administration's budget for the Justice Department.
But he also said some of the detainees at the Guant‡namo Bay, Cuba, facility will be let go as the administration believes some held there are not terrorists.

From all accounts, the Uighurs had not yet blown up anyone, so to the lawyer mind, they are not really terrorists, in the same way that an FBI trainee at Quantico is not yet an agent with a badge.
The Uighurs are more like terrorist cadets.
But wait, that category is prohibited also...

the government doesn't have any plans to release terrorists

Uh-oh, the old "no plans" dodge.
But at least now the administration is on notice that they are being watched on this issue. However the Obama acolytes may believe they can convince their pacifist base that the Uighurs are merely misunderstood ethnic activists.

Newt Gingrich had some intesting remarks on the Uighur situation on the following video starting at 2:50 minutes in.

• • •

Recession forces immigrants back to work in fields [5/06/09]
For the post-housing bubble variety of sob story, we read about illegal alien Israel Lopez who is moving out of his home because the US economy went south on him.

Israel Lopez remembers the day he drove away from the home that was almost his. Friends waved goodbye in the street. Behind them sat the mobile home where Lopez and his wife had painted the ceilings sky blue, the walls white.
Lopez hoped to set down roots in that small home near Charleston, S.C., a safe place where their son could grow up with lots of friends and huge soccer fields. He had a high-paying construction job that gave Lopez, an undocumented immigrant, the leverage he needed to climb from Mexico's strawberry fields toward the American middle class.
But last year Lopez was laid off as the construction industry collapsed, along with his dreams of home ownership. Lopez drove away that November day with what remained of the home's down payment in his pocket. They headed south, toward Florida, returning to the strawberry fields.

Hey, now Mr. Lopez is free to go home and pursue his Mexican Dream. The reporter didn't mention whether Mr. Lopez got a sub-prime minority-targeted loan. Inquiring minds want to know.

But there's more interesting fare in the lower reaches of this piece. Jobs are so hard to find that even legal immigrants are going after fieldwork -- and now there are far more pickers than jobs.

In a recession, when people lose their jobs they take something "beneath" their normal standards in order to tide them over until the economy improves. NPR and other news outlets have had stories about college-educated boomers in their 50s working entry-level gigs (Overqualified And Underemployed In 'Survival Jobs')
In pre-invasion America, there were jobs available at the bottom. But now the bottom is overflowing with immigrants and illegal aliens. There is a downward pressure on every demographic, as shown by the numbers of excess farmworkers. Yet Washington invites more to come with its talk of amnesty for all.

• • •

Chinese Terrorists Release in U.S. Imminent, No Answers From Holder [5/05/09]
Rep Frank Wolf has been beating the drum about the release of Uighur jihadists from Gitmo but doesn't seem to be getting much attention over a real and present danger.

Should foreigners picked up conducting terrorist training with Al Qaeda and subsequently held at Guantanamo Bay just be released into our communities, no questions asked?Ê Believe it or not, it could happen.Ê And soon.
The Obama administration is ready to release a number of Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 into the United States, according to several recent press reports.ÊÊ Ê
Information I have received, however, indicates that the 17 Uighurs being held at Guantanamo may be more dangerous than the public has been led to believe. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have reportedly raised serious concerns about the release of the 17 detainees, who are said to be members of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization affiliated with Al Qaeda.Ê Ê
To be clear, we are not talking about transferring these folks to prisons in the United States.Ê They would released, free and clear. They would be walking our streets, shopping in our malls, eating in our restaurants.ÊÊÊ Ê

Below is a statement by Rep Wolf warning about trained terrorists about to be loosed from prison onto America's streets.

• • •

Rep Frank Wolf Blasts Obama Over Imminent Release Of Uyghur Terrorists In U.S. [5/04/09]
Rep. Frank Wolf gave a speech this morning against the release of Uighur jihadists and other dangerous Gitmo prisoners into America, which is what the President is planning to do. [YouTube link]

Rep Frank Wolf Let's be clear: these terrorists would not be held in prisons but released into neighborhoods. They should not be released at all into the United States. Do Members realize who these people are? There have been published reports that the Uyghurs were members of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, a designated terrorist organization affiliated with Al Qaeda.

There's more text at this link.

• • •

May Day march for workers [5/04/09]
How low can they go? Here's some outstanding Marxican gibberish from San Jose, doubtless inspired by the Day of the Worker

A number of speakers stepped up to rally the crowd, including Richard Hobbs, interim executive director of Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN).
Hobbs said he believes immigrant workers are the most oppressed people in the U.S. and they are being denied basic human rights
"We have as many as 200,000 people in Santa Clara County living in second-class conditions," he said. "Some conditions are worse than under slavery in the United States to some extent because at least slaves had the right to work ... This is the civil rights movement of the 21st century in my opinion."

I don't want to put words in the mouths of long-deceased slaves, but I'm guessing that a "right to work" on massa's plantation was not high on their list of priorities.

• • •

'Virginia Is For Uighars': Releasing Jihadists -- and giving them money [5/04/09]
Rep. Frank Wolf was on the floor of the Congress this morning speaking against the release of the Uighur jihadists from Gitmo onto the streets of America. I don't have a clip of that impassioned speech, so I'll include instead the remarks of Frank Gaffney on the same topic.

The White House comment line is 202-456-1111. When I called a few minutes ago, the woman with whom I spoke was genuinely surprised when I told her that Obama said he intended to release Gitmo terrorists into America.

• • •

Some see media flu coverage as overblown [5/03/09]
Was the whole Mexico flu thing an episode of media hysteria? Looks like it. The original reports from Mexico were dire, but it was curious from Day 1 that the cases of flu may have been spreading, but the deaths occurred only in Mexico.
I'll admit to being initially concerned, because the first reports looked worrying. The seasonal influenza that goes around every year kills 36,000 in this country alone. But whether the threat was real or overblown, the Obama administration was not going to close the border, no matter what.
As the BBC reported on May 3, just over 100 people are thought to have died from the virus in Mexico, though only 19 deaths have been confirmed.
Oh.

After a few days of breathless H1N1 flu coverage - some of it on his own network - CNN commentator Jack Cafferty noted that 13,000 people have died from the "regular ol' flu" this year in the United States, compared with just one confirmed H1N1 flu death. Cafferty then asked his audience to respond to his online poll asking "if swine flu coverage was overblown."
He waited a moment, then said, "Hint: Yes." Sounding somewhat sheepish, "Situation Room" host Wolf Blitzer said, "OK, good hint. Thanks, Jack."
For a week, the flu story has whet cable TV's bloodlust with what the 24-hour cable news vacuum craves: mystery, death and great visuals that inspire fear. No detail about the flu - often delivered without context - has been too tiny to go unreported, which means that cable TV viewers are getting coverage that is moment-to-moment but often not terribly useful.

(However, the Red Chinese government is still not amused, and more than 70 Mexicans are quarantined in China. The SARS outbreak taught them not to fool around with contagious disease.)
Interestingly, a Rasmussen Poll posted May 4 noted a sensible prudence among the populace: 63% Say Border with Mexico Should Be Closed Until Swine Flu Is Under Control.
Anyway, some of the associated photos have been too wonderfully bizarre to ignore, and here's one last colorful picture from Mexico before the story mercifully falls from our collective concerns.

A woman wearing a face mask walks past a butcher shop where pig heads hang in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 28, 2009.

• • •

Summer resorts hiring heavily among U.S. unemployed [5/03/09]
Here's an item for the "work Americans won't do file" -- and from no less a source than the Associated Press.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. Ñ This summer, the guy running the Tilt-A-Whirl at the beach might be a laid-off, middle-aged accountant instead of the usual bored teenager. And the towel boy at the pool might be from East Providence instead of Eastern Europe.
All over the country, resorts and other summer businesses are getting swamped with applications from out-of-work Americans, many of them professionals. They are competing for jobs usually filled by young people and foreigners Ñ making beds, serving brunch, mowing lawns, running concession stands and operating carnival games and rides.

However, employers still prefer foreign workers who arrive with a Kick Me sign around their necks and who willingly self-exploit.

NPR has a more general item on the subject: Overqualified And Underemployed In 'Survival Jobs'.

Even with all the economic misery, Washington still permits 138,000 foreign workers every month. Why is that?

• • •

Gang-related bus murders rattle Guatemala capital [5/03/09]
The photo below caught my eye, along with its rather shocking cut line. Apparently Guatemala is giving Mexico a run for the title of most violent Central American country.

Relatives of bus drivers killed by gang members while on duty, demonstrate against violence, at the Congress in Guatemala City on April 30, 2009. At least 44 bus drivers and 16 of their assisants were killed by gang members in 2009 in Guatemala. Photo credit ALEXANDER MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

GUATEMALA CITY, April 17 (Reuters) - Guatemalan police have arrested a street gang leader on suspicion of organizing the murders of dozens of bus drivers, part of a wave of attacks on the capital's public transport system.
Police say 21-year-old Axel Ramirez, alias "El Smaily" ("Smiley"), belongs to the "Mara 18" gang and ordered more than 20 shootings of bus drivers and fare collectors for not paying extortionists.
Ramirez, arrested on Thursday after a shootout, had been released from prison in December after serving about four years for murdering a rival gang member.
"He was doing a lot of harm, not just extorting our country but organizing murders and generating terror wherever he lived," Interior Minister Salvador Gandara told local radio.
Gangs have attacked more than 40 bus employees this year. Usually the killers pull up to rickety city buses on motorcycles and open fire, or climb aboard and shoot the drivers.
Some 135 bus drivers were slain last year, 50 percent more than in 2007 and more than twice the number murdered in 2006.
Buses often crash after the shootings and passengers are killed or injured in the mayhem. Some bus companies have staged transit strikes in protest.

It's regrettable that so much violence is continuing in Guatemala. From available reports, the savagery appears more destructive than the gang-on-gang killings in Mexico, since average people like bus drivers are targeted in Guatemala.
However, that level of criminality should be a reminder that not all diversity is equal, and America should be far more judicious in the legal immigrants it welcomes.
According to the 2000 Census, 480,665 Guatemalans resided in this country at that time. Another statistic is that between 1998 and 2004, the United States deported more than 34,000 criminals to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

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GOP to Obama: Show Us a Plan for Releasing Guantanamo Prisoners [5/02/09]
How evil is the Obama administration? Evil enough to release dozens of terrorists from Guantanamo directly into American neighborhoods and make taxpayers support them on top of it.
Terrorist -- Obama's new visa category!

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has indicated that detainees released in the U.S. would likely receive government assistance to help them return to society -- one they've never been a part of.
"If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life," Blair said last month. "You can't just put them on the street."
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, ranking Republican of the House Judiciary Committee, said it will be the full responsibility of the Obama administration if any additional crimes or terrorist attacks are committed once the detainees are released to their own devices.

"Government assistance" -- that means citizen tax dollars for social welfare programs in PC speak.
Thirteen percent of American voters think that it's okay to release terrorists into the country -- disappointingly high, IMO.
For background, see my October article, Judge Ricardo Urbina To Uighur Suspected Jihadists: "Welcome to America!"
In addition, see Rep Frank Wolf's letter to the President asking that critical information about the nature of Uighurs be declassified and released. Wolf notes, "Information I have received indicates that the Uyghurs may be more dangerous than the public has been led to believe."
One voice of leadership against the insanity of turning aspects of national security over to judges has been former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who directed the 1995 trial against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the blind sheik). McCarthy wrote the book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

He discussed the difficulties of mixing up legalities with protecting the country in an interview of the online program Uncommon Knowledge: Law & Jihad with Andrew McCarthy, June 2, 2008

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Voters take a dim view of governor, Legislature [5/01/09]
Today's California Field Poll reveals the disgust of state voters with Sacramento shenanigans.

With the economy and state budget in turmoil, California voters are more frustrated than ever with state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to a Field Poll released today.
Only 14 percent of registered voters approve of the Legislature's performance, compared with 74 percent who disapprove of the Democratic-led institution. That is the lowest mark for the California Legislature in the Field Poll's 27-year history of tracking its job performance rating.
Schwarzenegger also hit a new personal low, with 33 percent saying they approve of the Republican governor, compared with 55 percent who disapprove. And a slightly higher percentage of Democrats approve of him than do members of his own Republican Party, according to the poll.

In other polling news, the governor's array of propositions is not doing well, and Sacramento may be forced to cope with the mess it has made: Dan Walters: WhatÕs Plan B if five ballot measures fail?.

Will Plan B include cutting the cornucopia of goodies for illegal aliens? I'm not holding my breath. We taxpayers still unwillingly fork over substantial sums for services for illegal aliens, for example over $100 million annually to subsidize in-state tuition for foreigners and "free" medical care for uninvited guests.

While on the topic of California on the financial brink, there is yet another sinkhole of tax money, the more than 5,000 retired California government workers who receive pensions in excess of $100K annually. For information on the mind-blowing pension boondoggle, see the Pension Watch website.

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Gates defends plan to accept Chinese detainees in U.S. [5/01/09]
There's been entirely too little reporting about the White House plans to release Guantanamo terrorists into the country.

Reporting from Washington -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that he expected staunch opposition in Congress to the Obama administration's plans to release some of the Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo into the United States.
Confirming the plans for the first time, Gates said that the administration intended to release some of the 17 Chinese Uighurs into the U.S. as part of the process of closing the prison, although he added that a final decision had not been made. Gates said the Uighurs would face persecution if they were returned to China, as Beijing has demanded.

Washington doesn't want to trust Red China with the Uighurs? It doesn't mind trusting the Chinese with our health and welfare by accepting its food, medicine and manufactured products into our stores with no questions asked.

Meanwhile, the people don't want "terrorist" to become the latest visa category: 75% Oppose Release of Guantanamo Inmates in the United States.

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Border Patrol agents ordered NOT to wear protective masks against Mexican swine flu [5/01/09]
If my job was to stick my face into thousands of cars full of Mexicans every day, I would want to wear a mask on a regular basis. But while the government is spreading panic about the swine flu outbreak, it will not permit officers to protect themselves.

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